Yes Friday was rough. Those in the room just stared at me ...I suppose waiting for my jaw to close and for the look of disbelief to disappear from my face. It took me about 4 hours to lift my broken heart back up to where it belongs in my chest. Finally, my realistic nature kicked in and I started to think about what needs to be done for us to reach our goals.

As you know, USATH has many goals, there are ones for building our grassroots programs all the way to building the best high performance teams possible and succeed in international competition. These are not easy tasks to accomplish but if we look at USATH's President Dieter Esch's MASTER PLAN, we have a well defined path to follow to reach our Olympic and international goals. We're blessed to have a clear vision and our federation's leaders have laid out the roadmap. Some of the best vehicles we have, in my opinion, are the brilliant partnerships we have with Poland and Germany - two of the leading handball countries in the world. So realistically....all we have to do is stay on course and execute the plan with great persistence, diligence, and never letting go of the passion we all had on our first day of work, or for some, the first day we threw our first handball. For me, I was about 11 years old.

I'm sure as this blog is read some people will say "ah she's rationalizing the loss of Chicago 2016". Well whatever it is, I know that regardless of where the games of 2016 are held, our goals are the same, our attitude is the same and the fight we will put forth to achieve these goals are the same if not stronger. We will earn our place at the top of the list of handball powers and we will have proud athletes in 2016 wearing the red white and blue.

The waiting is over and for a girl like me who despises transition, I can tell you that I can't wait to wake up tomorrow morning to a new day...a day of clarity. Now we move full steam ahead and I dare anyone to get in our way. USATH is on a mission and there is plenty of room for everyone to join in.

Onwards and upwards everyone! Remember to sign up for this year's membership, join or start up a club, teach some kids about handball, play some matches and let's show the world that we too, have great handballers!

Dominique
dominique@usateamhandball.org